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Focus: Britain's secret war on terror

As Michael Howard and Tony Blair slugged it out in the Commons last week, hundreds of men and women from the security services were engaged in a covert battle on the streets. How serious is the threat? report

On Friday afternoon, as MPs and peers were locked in a grand parliamentary row over the abstract principles of liberty and justice, the apparatus of Britain’s secret state stood on its second highest level of alert — “severe (general)”.

The alert has remained enforced since November 2003 when an Al-Qaeda car bomb ripped through the front of the British consulate in Istanbul, killing the consul general and more than 25 others.

It means that an attack is expected on the British mainland but there is no specific intelligence to say where and when. Specialist units of the police, military and emergency services must be prepared to react at a moment’s notice.

The front line in this, Britain’s real war on terror, is not in the corridors of the houses of parliament but some 300 metres along the river inside Thames House, the imposing neo-classical headquarters of MI5, the domestic security service.